Many situations exist in which identifying and communicating with other people that are in the same place at the same time is desired by individuals. These places include, for example, a network event (e.g., professional conference), a shopping mall, entertainment club, a vacation establishment (e.g., a cruise ship), and a university campus.
There are solutions that exist to facilitate communication among individuals in these settings. However, they include a number of drawbacks. One such solution uses a central server to facilitate the communication. To enable communication, all the users have to enter their information into the central server and then all communications thereafter have to go through the central server. If the central server become goes down and is no longer operational, then all communication is stopped. Thus, it would be desirable to have a solution that doesn't rely on a central server for all communications.